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China's target of becoming a world leader
in artificial intelligence (AI) has placed its capital and third-most populous
city at the forefront of global AI innovation. Beijing, a city with a history
stretching back more than three millennia, is now looking toward a future fueled
by AI innovation, investment and development.

Home to the Forbidden City, the Summer
Palace and the Temple of Heaven, the city has in more recent times been building
temples to its modern culture of innovation, with huge AI centers popping up throughout
the metropolis.

According to the
Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry
Development
white paper, published by the Beijing
Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, Beijing is home to
1,070 AI companies.
Asia
Times
reported that as of early May 2018, the number of AI companies with
venture capital actually totaled 1,237, representing 35% of the total number of
AI enterprises in China.

The
Asia
Times
report revealed that of all Beijing-based AI firms, 29% were at the
A-round of funding, with 6.7% in Pre-A round. Angel investors had provided funding to 18.5% of these firms, while 2.7%
had received funding from seed investors.

According to the white paper commissioned
by the Beijing authorities, the Chinese capital has five competitive advantages
for AI companies looking to base themselves in the city: related policies; talents capital; innovation
and entrepreneurship capacity; software R&D; and patent protection.

Challenges remain,
however, and the white paper singled out four challenges the city needs to
overcome to continue its rapidly increasing influence within the global tech
sphere: weak initiate innovation; lack of chips, sensors and critical
components; lack of high-end talent; and cost disadvantage and regional
competition.

China's Silicon Valley

Zhongguancun, Beijing's
tech hub, is home to hundreds – if not thousands – of AI enterprises, having
grown quickly over the past decade to become China's undisputed home of
technological innovation. A report released by business resource company Expert
Market listed Zhongguancun top of its
Top 10 Tech
Hubs to Live and Work In
, ahead of Berlin's Silicon Allee, the Bay
Area's famed Silicon Valley and Austin's Silicon Hills.

Expert Market lead
researcher Sophia Patsikas says: "Over the last few years, China has made
a concerted effort to put itself on the tech map and Beijing now plays host to
some of the world's biggest tech giants."

Formerly a graveyard for eunuchs until the late Qing
Dynasty, in the 1980s and 1990s, Zhongguancun became known for its large-scale
electronics markets. Today, the tech hub is abuzz with tech
giants, unicorns and startups. Zhongguancun
Science Park has one of the highest concentrations of educational resources in
China, with approximately 40 higher educational institutions and more than 200
national and provincial research institutions located within the park.

On this website alone, coverage of the
Chinese AI market has increased exponentially over the past 12 months, with Beijing
sitting right at the heart of tech disruption, innovation and financing.

While not always positive, such as the
banning of services and platforms popular in the West, the vast majority of
news coming out of the Chinese tech space appears to demonstrate the country
and its large tech organizations are continuing to innovate, invest and
collaborate on key AI developments.

The global focus on China's AI industry has
helped to fuel interest and encourage investment, while also providing
authorities and businesses working in the AI sector with the confidence to
continue innovating and developing new AI solutions. By making its mark on the
global tech news agenda, Beijing and China's other tech hubs are demonstrating
that AI innovation does not exclusively reside with the West's established tech
giants.

With many Western websites such as YouTube,
Facebook and Google unavailable in China, Chinese tech entrepreneurs have been
indirectly tasked with creating Chinese equivalents, and with a huge potential
domestic audience to target, the scale and size of the Chinese tech industry
presents a myriad of opportunity.

Beijing itself is home to the likes of Xiaomi, LeEco and Baidu, while many North American and European
companies have their APAC bases in the city, including Google and Intel, while Microsoft Research Asia, Microsoft's
fundamental research arm in the APAC region, is located in Zhongguancun. Despite its search engine being
blocked behind China's firewall,
Google remains very active in the country announcing earlier this year its
intention to launch a Beijing-based AI research team which will target
local research talent.

Beijing authority also
recently released blueprints for an autonomous driving zone, which will be dedicated
to testing and developing local autonomous vehicles, on the outskirt of the city.

To accommodate the growing number of
startups and international players moving into the city, Beijing officials
announced a plan to build a $2.12bn AI development park in the west of the
city. Set to house up to 400 businesses, the AI park will have an estimated
output of CNY50bn ($7.19bn). According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, project developer Zhongguancun Development
Group will partner with foreign universities to build a national-level AI lab
in the area. Xinhua revealed that the new park would aim to attract enterprises
working in the areas of cloud computing, big data, deep learning and biometric
identification.

With one eye on future
disruptive trends, many Chinese companies are innovating in ways that compete
and at times differ to the way the Googles and Amazons of the world innovate. In September 2018, Robin
Li Yanhong, CEO of Baidu, said that
"AI will be bigger than the internet" highlighting that AI
represents more than just progression within the world of big data and the
cloud.

Jie Liu, Principal R&D Architect, Autonomous Driving Technology at Baidu, will be speaking at the upcoming AI & Big Data Innovation Summit in Beijing on November 21–22, 2018. Register for tickets today to hear the latest insights from Jie Liu and a host of leading names within Asia's bustling AI and big data scene.

Adversity over fear

As Beijing continues
its march toward global AI prominence, fears remain over a future dominated by
AI solutions and systems. With a population topping 20 million to provide work for,
and with numerous traditional industries concerned at the scale of upheaval expected
from the mass adoption of AI and machine learning technologies, Baidu's Li offers
some reassurance to Beijing's concerned residents. He predicts that while AI
will replace many human roles, the increasing use of automation will also
create many new jobs.

"It's hard for me
or anyone to imagine what new job opportunities will be created" he added.
"However, I see more opportunities than threats."

And as a hub with
global clout, Beijing's AI industry will likely see even more international
players collaborating with companies in the city. At a conference in Shanghai
in September, China's vice-premier Liu He stated that the future of AI would
depend heavily on a more collaborative approach across nations.

"We're hoping
that all countries, as members of the global village, will be inclusive and
support each other so that we can respond to the double-edged-sword effect of
new technologies," he said.

"AI represents a
new era. Cross-national and cross-discipline cooperation is inevitable."

To hear the leading names in the Chinese data
and AI fields share their latest insights, and discuss the challenges and
opportunities AI presents, visit the upcoming
AI
& Big Data Innovation Summit in Beijing
on November 21–22, 2018.